


By Fingertips

by ameliacareful



Series: Strangers and Brothers [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, BAMF Sam Winchester, Dean left, Fireman Dean, Gen, Sam raised alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:42:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean was 14, he argued irreparably with John.  Now he’s 26 and a firefighter when he runs into a 6’4” guy in an abandoned house and recognizes that he’s a hunter and thinks that maybe he knows him.  But Sam is nothing like he remembers.</p><p>        I get off at midnight,” Dean said.  “I can help you with the salt and burn.<br/>“I don’t work with a partner,” the hunter said.<br/>Dean swallowed.  “Sammy?” he said.<br/>Fuck no.  The guy wasn’t Sammy.  For years, Dean had seen Sammy everywhere and this was just that.  What was the likelihood that he would run into a hunter and it would be his little brother?  God, what was the likelihood his brother was still alive?  The thought he never ever let himself have.<br/>Time stopped.<br/>Then the guy’s shoulder’s sagged.  “Dean.  You’re gonna distract me and get me killed.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stranger

            Dean hated arsonists.  More than half the fires he went to were arson.  He liked fires though.  Most of his work as a ‘firefighter’ was actually not fighting fires at all, it was paramedic work.  This particular ‘fire’ was lame-ass in the extreme.  Arsonists came in more flavors than Lifesavers and this one was moron.  Good arsonists did things like wrapped the electrical wires in newspaper, ran the current, made it look like the fire started in the walls and _burned the fucking house down_.  This guy, whoever he was, had sprinkled something like gasoline in a corner of a kitchen and the fire had gone out.  
            Still better than a paramedic run for a homeless guy/frequent flyer who knew ‘shortness of breath and chest pain’ would get him a taxi ride to that beautiful pharmacy called the hospital.  
Greeley, Colorado wasn’t where he had expected to end up.       
Brian Snyder was the guy stuck with going through the house with him.  Snyder was scuffing his boot through the charred linoleum in the kitchen, the wall above it shirred black.  The house was an old brick two story from back in the day when a factory job was enough to earn a guy a house.  “I’ll check upstairs,” Dean said.  
            Snyder would make sure the downstairs was clear.  Standard op, make sure there wasn’t fire anywhere else.  Dean clomped up the stair, sweltering a bit in bunker gear despite the November cold.  Three tiny bare bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom so small he filled it.  In the door of master bedroom he took off his helmet to wipe his forehead.  The chill was welcome except when he exhaled he could see the feather plume of his breath and it was not that cold.  
            For a moment he didn’t get what was going on.  To his credit, it had been twelve years since he hunted with his dad.  Then he knew and adrenaline was pumping his heart like a five alarm fire tone.   He scanned the room.  Nothing to see but stained carpet, blue and mauve wallpaper from the 90’s, and a closet with the door missing; no sign of a ghost.  But it was here.  Dean didn’t have a freakin’ thing.  Not a weapon, not even salt; firefighters don’t usually carry salt, unless they’re eating.  
            There was one of those ceiling entrances to an attic, the kind that were just a square in the ceiling because the attic wasn’t big enough to use for much of anything except maybe storing Christmas ornaments.  It popped open now but instead of a ghost, a guy dropped out of it, his back to Dean.  The guy landed lightly on the balls of his feet, knees bent.  Jeans, army surplus jacket, tire iron, longish brown hair.  When he straightened up he kept going up and up.  Dean was tall but this guy was taller.  Broad, too.  He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Get out of here.”  
            Worlds collided and for a moment Dean couldn’t think.  
            “I’ve got this,” the guy said.  “Get your guy out of here.”  
            “You’re a hunter,” Dean said.  Which may have been obvious but give a guy a break, Dean was expecting an arsonist.  
            “Yeah,” the big guy said.  Then an old dude in dull green ‘40’s worker’s coveralls manifested and rushed him and the big guy stepped back lightly and swung the tire iron through it and it dispersed.   The room was small enough that he was only about two feet away from Dean.  
            “Did you start the fire?” Dean asked.  “‘Cause you did a piss poor job of it.”  
            “No, I put it out,” the hunter said, sounding irritated, “but someone called it in anyway.  Now I’ve got to come back when you guys are gone.”  
            The ghost came back and there wasn’t anywhere for the hunter to go because Dean was crowding him and the ghost picked up the big guy in that way they had and threw him into Dean and they both landed loudly and painfully on Dean’s back in the hallway.  Dean remembered this part, too.  He had NOT missed this.  
            Downstairs, Snyder called up, “Winchester?”  
            They were tangled up in each other and the ghost was trying to throttle the hunter on top of him.  He’d dropped the tire iron and Dean grabbed it and managed to get it and swing it through the ghost and disperse it.   
            The other hunter scrambled to his feet and hauled Dean up.  “Get out of here before you get me killed,” he hissed and Dean saw his face for the first time. Dean thought of hunters as grizzled guys with lined faces and stubble.  This guy was young, younger even than Dean and his hair was half in his eyes.  Dean couldn’t see what color his eyes were, it was not well lit in the hallway, but he could see the way they angled up a little, kind of of foxy.   
            “Winchester?” Snyder said again and started up the stairs.  
            “Sorry!” Dean yelled, “tripped, um, everything’s clear up here.  Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”  
            The hunter backed up, turned back into the master bedroom, tire iron raised, fighting stance, one foot forward, light on his feet again.   Dean’s heart was hammering, from the hunt, and from those eyes, those familiar eyes.  Damn he was so big, though.  
            Most important that Snyder didn’t come up, too much to explain.   
            Back outside the rest of the crew was standing around the truck bitching about dinner.  “Hey,” Dean said, “I think I dropped my goddamn phone.  I’ll be right back.”  
            He took the stairs two at a time.  The hunter was in the doorway, tire iron at ready.  “What the fuck,” he said without turning his head away from the empty room he was watching.  
            “I get off at midnight,” Dean said.  “I can help you with the salt and burn.”  
            “I don’t work with a partner,” the hunter said.  
            Dean swallowed.  “Sammy?” he said.  
            Fuck no.  The guy wasn’t Sammy.  For years, Dean had seen Sammy everywhere and this was just that.  What was the likelihood that he would run into a hunter and it would be his little brother?  God, what was the likelihood his brother was still alive?  The thought he never ever let himself have.  
            Time stopped.  
            Then the guy’s shoulder’s sagged.  “Dean.  You’re gonna distract me and get me killed.”  
            “Okay.”  His heart, which had stopped, started pounding again.  Shortness of breath and chest pain, he should call EMS for god’s sake.  “Okay.  I’m gone.  A little after midnight, here,” Dean said.

#

           The rest of the day was a balance of crazy hope and fear.  Like the worst ever anticipation of a hot date.  Sammy was alive.   
            Still, some part of him wasn’t surprised when at a little before eleven, the call from dispatch came in, same address.  Tones on the radio for a fire.  Three engines, two firehouses.  Not good, not good, three engines was a serious fire.  He hoped it was the same moron that had tried before, some kid with a can of gasoline…  
            They saw the fire before they turned the corner, they saw the orange of the sky, a giant notice.  Whoever had lit the house back up had done a far better job, the old place was engulfed.  They put the big water on the roof (meant the place was beyond saving but that was obvious as soon as they saw it.)  They kept the houses on either side of it and in back from catching.  
            Sitting at the end of the driveway was a blue box of salt with the little girl with the umbrella on the front.  An apology.  A fuck you.  A message in a bottle.


	2. A Very Tall Younger Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean groped for a light switch. The light was too bright but Sam was in the bed, sitting up. He was bare-chested. He had a gun trained on Dean. A 9mm, maybe, some part of Dean’s brain thought. Nothing about the man on the bed made him think of his brother. The man on the bed was broad shouldered, muscled—cut even. Scary. He had some scars. Sam had been little and skinny. Dad was 6’1” but nobody thought Sammy would be tall. His eyes were cold.  
> The man on the bed might shoot him. He didn’t know this guy at all.  
> Oh Roni, Dean thought, I fucked up.

            Dean was pissed. He didn’t get off until 3:00am working the fire. It was cold, he was wet. He should have been worn out but he knew that he didn’t have much time. Sammy was probably holed up a motel but he’d be gone after a few hours sleep. Fucker could have burned out the neighborhood. Dean left a message for Roni, “Hi Babe, fire tonight, don’t worry.” He thought of Roni, asleep at home. She was probably wearing one of his old t-shirts. She had to be at work at 8:00am. He was supposed to sleep and she had class after work and then they’d have a late dinner. Worlds colliding again. How many times had he wanted Roni and Sam to meet? In his head that meeting involved some vague version of ten-year-old Sammy, not some guy big enough to play the villain in a Schwarzenegger movie.

            He had been a fucking hunter once himself, he knew how to start with a lead, however thin. He called up a list of motels.

            He didn’t know what he was looking for. Sammy had said that he didn’t hunt with a partner which meant that he wasn’t hunting with Dad. (Was Dad dead? That wasn’t something to think about right now.) The rules with Dad had been mom and pop motels but for all Dean knew now it was Motel 6. He didn’t know what Sammy drove. Didn’t know anything. He started at the one closest to the fire and just cruised, looking for anything that hinted at Sammy.

The fourth motel he saw the Impala parked in the back, long and beautiful, as obvious as blue neon that said _Winchester in temporary residence_.

            That was fucking impossible. The car was almost fifty years old. Called attention to itself in every way. Why would Sammy be hunting in the Impala? Maybe a coincidence? No fucking way. There were only three cars in the back so it was pretty clear which room Sammy was in. Dean didn’t have lock picks anymore,   hadn’t for a decade. He rooted around in his car and finally found a folder in the backseat from a paramedic seminar on heartsounds. Inside some of the papers were held together by a paperclip. Could he even still open a lock with a paperclip?

            Like riding a bike, right?

            When he got out of the car the air felt cool and he was suddenly convinced that one of the other hotel doors was going to open and someone was going to see him and ask what the hell he was doing. (When he was fourteen he’d have considered this a cakewalk.)

            He went to one knee in front of the door and slowly, oh so slowly inserted the wire. It was hard to see, there wasn’t much light in the parking lot. Actually an advantage because as his father had taught him, lockpicking was all in his fingertips, not his eyes. Sam had been a natural at lockpicking. Sam was good at things that required cleverness. Leaving the salt had been a Sam thing; a message that Dean was supposed to decode. Dad had never seen that Sam was good at a shit ton of stuff because Sam was younger and Dad kept expecting him to be good at different things. To have a certain instinct.

            The part of the lock where the pins were was called the blind and Dean thought he was in the blind now. It had been so long. How many fucking pins in this lock? Five. He felt for the drop of a pin. It took him fifteen fucking minutes to pick a fucking key style hotel door with a standard Kwikset lock. (Thank God it wasn’t a door with a card lock like any decent hotel.) He was in a cold sweat. What if it wasn’t Sammy’s room? Everything was so loud. He kept thinking someone was going to open their door. At four in the fucking morning. And to think that at fourteen he fought monsters.

            The click of the door opening was the loudest thing of all.

            The room was so dark it was a yawning space, endless and boundless. Infinite with possibility. He heard the click of the safety on a gun.

            “Hi Sammy,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. I was stuck at a fire.”

            “Turn on the light,” his brother growled.

            He groped for a light switch. The light was too bright but Sam was in the bed, sitting up. He was bare-chested. He had a gun trained on Dean. A 9mm, maybe, some part of Dean’s brain thought. Nothing about the man on the bed made him think of his brother. The man on the bed was broad shouldered, muscled—cut even. Scary. He had some scars. Sam had been little and skinny. Dad was 6’1” but nobody thought Sammy would be tall. His eyes were cold.

            The man on the bed might shoot him. He didn’t know this guy at all.

            Oh Roni, he thought, I fucked up.

Then Sam sighed and put the gun on the nightstand. He ran his hands through his hair. Big hands.

            Dean closed the door and all the anger he’d been carrying surged back. “What the fuck. Do you know you could have burned down the entire neighborhood? So help me I should punch you in the face.”

            “You probably shouldn’t,” Sam said. And added. “I called it in before I started it.”

            “Well, you did a damn good job of starting it,” Dean said. “Caught the back fence. Blistered the paint on the houses on either side.”

            “I’m sorry,” Sam said.

            If Dean had any doubt that the guy in the bed was his brother, that clinched it. Sam apologized for everything. Dean couldn’t help it, he laughed.

            “What,” Sam said.

            Dean shook his head. “You’re driving the Impala?”

            “Yeah.”

            “What about Dad?” Dean held his breath. Half expecting the worst.

            “He drives that old pick-up,” Sam said. Sam was watching him, wary as a cat.

            “I can’t believe how freakin’ huge you are,” Dean said.

            “It’s been twelve years,” Sam said, his voice flat.

            “I kept thinking you’d quit hunting and call me,” Dean said.

            The silence that answered was awkward. Dean looked around the motel room. It was a motel room. Like a hundred motel rooms, different in the particulars but the same in the general scheme of things. This one had white walls, a weird flowered bedspread, and a faintly dank smell. Sam had a duffle bag, a laptop, a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and a stack of textbooks .

            “Are those school books?” Dean said.

            Sam got out of the bed. (He was wearing boxers.) He scooped up the books and dropped them in the duffle. “Just doing some reading.”

            “You don’t hunt with Dad anymore?”

            Sam shook his head. “Not so much.”

            “Where is he?”

            “He’s missing,” Sam said.


	3. A Diner Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re a firefighter,” Sam said. Dean was about to say that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a serial killer but Sam kept going. “You’re with Engine Company 8. . You graduated from Fairview High School. Your foster parents were Jim and Linda Stevens. You graduated from University of Northern Colorado with a degree in Firefighting, which I didn’t even know was a degree until you got it. You’re a certified paramedic. You have a girlfriend, Veronica Sobowleski. She’s working at a bank but is getting her teaching certificate at the University of Boulder. Last year they did a fundraising calendar for a burn charity featuring firemen. You and some other guy were August.”

             Dean didn’t know what to make of Sam. Sam had just told him that John Winchester was missing and he couldn’t get a read on whether Sam was upset or even cared. “Sammy?” he said.

            “He’s been missing about three weeks,” Sam said. “He can go a week without answering his phone but three weeks is a lot, even for John.” He reached into his duffle and pulled out a t-shirt, pulled it on. “I talk to him about once a month. See him a couple of times a year. He talks to Bobby Singer once in awhile.”

            “I thought Bobby Singer threatened to shoot him,” Dean said.

            Sam gave him a long look. “Bobby threatens to shoot almost everybody at one point or another. John doesn’t visit, but they talk.”

            “So he’s disappeared before,” Dean said. “When we were kids.

            “Someone sent me coordinates, it was his phone,” Sam said. “That’s why it’s strange he won’t answer calls. He’ll send me leads on a hunt sometimes and I’ll check it out and let him know if I can pick it up. I stopped here for this salt and burn but then I’m heading there to see what’s up.”

            It’s all said so matter-of-fact.

            “Why don’t you hunt with him anymore?” Dean asked.

            “You know what he’s like,” Sam said. “It’s not like he’s gotten better over the years.” He was putting on a plaid shirt.

            “You’re leaving? Right now?”

            “I’m not going to get any more sleep.” Sam pulled on a pair of ragged jeans.

            “You’re not leaving. Not yet.” Dean stood between Sam and the door.

            Sam sat down and crossed his arms.

            “Don’t you want to talk?” Dean asked. “Find out if I’m a serial killer or whatever?”

            “You’re a firefighter,” Sam said. Dean was about to say that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a serial killer but Sam kept going. “You’re with Engine Company 8. . You graduated from Fairview High School. Your foster parents were Jim and Linda Stevens. You graduated from University of Northern Colorado with a degree in Firefighting, which I didn’t even know was a degree until you got it. You’re a certified paramedic. You have a girlfriend, Veronica Sobowleski. She’s working at a bank but is getting her teaching certificate at the University of Boulder. Last year they did a fundraising calendar for a burn charity featuring firemen. You and some other guy were August.”

            “That’s just creepy,” Dean said. “Anybody ever tell you that you’ve got issues?”

            Sam raised an eyebrow.

            “Okay, Dad’s a headcase and you’ve been raised to hunt, but dude. You could have just got in touch.”

            “You left. You’ve got a life,” Sam said. It felt like an accusation.

            “Dad threw me out,” Dean said. Over you, he thought, but I’m never going to tell you that. Because I should have stayed.

            Sam nodded. “Best thing that ever happened to you. Why would I drag you back in?”

            “Do me one favor,” Dean said. “Have breakfast.”

            Several things happened in Sam’s face. Funny muscle twitches along his jawline.

            Dean knew he was going to say no. Braced himself for it. Sam was going to disappear and it would be back to trying not to wonder if he was dead. Worse now wondering about Dad disappearing.

            “Okay,” he said.

            They drove separately, Dean giving Sam the address of the diner. When Dean got in his car he called Roni. “Babe,” he said when she picked up. It was five in the morning.

            “Dean,” she was confused, a little scared.

            “You gotta meet me at Debbie’s Diner. Sammy’s here. He’s willing to have breakfast but he’s skittish as a cat on a hot stove and he’s not going to stay and I want you to meet him so bad.”

            “Your brother?” she said. “Your little brother? Oh my God, Dean.”

            Roni thought that his dad and brother did bail bond and bounty hunter stuff. He was pretty sure she thought that they did slightly criminal stuff as well and he had carefully let her believe that. It meant fewer questions. But she knew all about Sammy. He had told her everything about Sammy.

#

            When he pulled into the diner parking lot, he didn’t see the Impala and he was sure that Sam had changed his mind. It was still dark in the empty hour before dawn when people often seem to die, and no one should be awake. The hours of despair. The diner was lit but the road behind him was empty, the traffic lights just going through the motions.

            He parked and got out and as he was yanking the glass door open he heard the rumble of the Impala pulling in and his heart, oh God his heart.

            He slid into the red vinyl booth. The place was pretty empty at 5:30 in the morning. A woman stood dreaming at the cash register. Custard pies posed like beauty queens in a case. Sam slid in across from him, hair hiding his face. That was familiar. He saw a glimpse of ten-year-old Sammy in this stranger.

            “I thought you might not show up,” Dean said.

            “I thought I might not, too,” Sam said. He shook his hair out of his face. “Two coffees,” to the waitress. She was wearing black and white checked Converse and had a nose ring.

            Dean just looked at him. This was Sam. He wanted to chain him to a chair. He wanted to study him. He wanted to fucking interrogate him. Sam looked back at him, impassive. “Nice necklace,” he said.

            “Yeah,” Dean said, glancing down at the amulet. “My little brother gave it to me.”

            Roni walked in and looked around until she saw Dean. Roni was not what Dean would have described as his type. He’d always liked them stacked and sassy. She was tall, angular, coltish, even. She didn’t wear make-up. She had brown hair that she wore kind of messy. He’d met her when another firefighter brought her to a picnic and had too many beers and started ignoring her. She was super smart and a little shy.

            “Roni,” he said, “this is Sammy.”

            Sam, startled, rose politely to meet her. He’d always had manners although God knew where he got them considering he’d been raised by wolves. “Sam,” he said. “Nobody calls me ‘Sammy’.”

            They all settled into the booth. “I’m so glad to meet you,” Roni said. “Dean talks about you a lot.”

            Sam smiled, “Really?” He glanced at Dean but Dean wasn’t sure what that meant.

            “I’ve heard stories about how smart you are and about the time you guys set off fireworks and set fire to a field and how you got an army man stuck in the back ashtray of the car,” she said.

            Sam actually did smile and he still had dimples. “It’s still there,” he said. “I can show it to you after breakfast. Dean carved our initials in the car, too.”

            “Caught holy hell,” Dean said.

            “Dean says you’re studying to become a teacher,” Sam said. “What grades?”

            “High school,” Roni said. “Science, because you know, girls and math and science.”

            Sam leaned slightly forward like this was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. “The way girls have no role models?”

            “That,” Roni said, “and also the way they’re just socially pressured to not be smart—”

            An hour later Roni was telling Sam all about growing up Catholic. Sam knew a lot about Catholicism. Dean didn’t have the heart to tell Roni that Sam knew it mostly in the original Latin. “Oh shit,” Roni said, “I’ve got to go home and get ready for work. I can’t believe I bored your brother with all that!”

            “Not boring at all,” Sam said. “I don’t know how you put up with Dean.”

            “It’s got it’s moments,” Roni said. She leaned down and gave Dean a quick kiss. “You’ve got an EDO, you should get your brother to stay, spend some time.”

            Fatigue was burning through Dean. He’d love nothing better than to take a nap and know that he could wake up and spend some time with the mystery of his brother but he was pretty certain that in a few more minutes Sam was going to walk out of here and he’d never see him again.

            “She’s great,” Sam said.

            “I know,” he said. “So much better than I deserve.”

            “What’s an EDO?

            “Earned day off. I work 24 hours on, 48 off. But it’s supposed to be the equivalent to a 40 hour a week job, so I also get earned days off. I don’t work my next shift, I don’t have to be back to work for five days.”

            Sam nodded. He was about to say something. Dean knew it was good-bye.

            “Hey,” Dean blurted. “I’ve got five days. Why don’t I go with you.”


	4. Rule Number One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Sam drove a ’67 Impala in mint condition, had hair like he was into rockabilly, had a trunk with a secret compartment full of ghost killing equipment, slept in cheap hotels with a 9mm under his pillow and listened to NPR. “What do you do for fun? Rock climbing? Meth?”
> 
> Sam gave him a weird look.
> 
> “Really, what do you do for fun?”
> 
> “Watch TV in motel rooms.” He pulled out a map. “Get us to Jericho, California, will you?”

            Dean packed five t-shirts, a couple of henleys, his shaving kit, two pairs of jeans and a hoodie and he still suspected he had more stuff than Sam. Not counting Sam’s books. He called Roni at work and told her he was taking a road trip with Sam. She sounded tentative about it but mostly pleased.

            The sun was up when he walked out to the Impala. It was another worlds collide moment to see the stranger that was his brother in the driver’s seat. He’d unconsciously expected his Dad. Like Sam said, the little green army guy was still stuck in the ashtray in the back.

            They said that went you went back to the house you grew up in, or your old elementary school, it seemed smaller, but the Impala’s bench seats were so big compared to a modern car.

            “That music you and John listened to is in a box in the trunk,” Sam said. “All that heavy metal stuff,” Sam said.

            Dean remembered. Every hunt, driving with the tape deck blasting Led Zeppelin or Metallica. “I was fourteen, tastes change.”

            Sam shrugged. “There’s some CD’s in the back seat if you want.”

            “What do you listen to?”

            “CD’s or NPR if I want something to listen to.”

            So Sam drove a ’67 Impala in mint condition, had hair like he was into rockabilly, had a trunk with a secret compartment full of ghost killing equipment, slept in cheap hotels with a 9mm under his pillow and listened to NPR. “What do you do for fun? Rock climbing? Meth?”

            Sam gave him a weird look.

            “Really, what do you do for fun?”

            “Watch TV in motel rooms.” He pulled out a map. “Get us to Jericho, California, will you?”

            “Back roads?”

            Sam nodded.

            Sam used to plot the routes, blue highways rather than the bright double lines of the interstates. It was one of the first things he learned to do. It was the first thing Dean had learned to do, too, but Sam took over when he was about six. He read when he was three or four. Dean had read to him in the back seat to pass the time. Dr. Seuss, cheap books from drugstores, over and over. Then one day Sam had started reading them back. “We’ll lose a day unless we take 80 across Nevada.”

            “80 across Nevada is fine,” Sam said.

            “Okay, 183 north out of Greeley,” Dean said.

            The passenger seat of the Impala was familiar.

            Sam’s CD collection was a strange as everything else about Sam. When Dean left home he threw himself into Music Dad Hated. That was hiphop: Dr. Dre, Cypress Hill, Ice Cube. He still liked some of that stuff but now he mostly listened to the same thing the guys at the station listened to which could be anything from The Beatles to David Bowie to Foo Fighters. White guy rock.

            The CDs were in sections, all labeled. Sam had a dozen or so hiphop CDs and a lot of rock. He had some jazz: Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He had some classical stuff; the big guys but also things Dean had never heard of like the Kronos Quartet, and Philip Glass. Motown, Blues, Al Greene. A section called ballads that included Tom Waits and Chris Isaacs, all depressing Dean suspected. That section looked the most played. ‘Indies’ had more bands he’d never heard of; New Pornographers and Sufjan Stevens. New Pornographers sounded promising.

            “I’ve never heard of a lot of this stuff,” Dean said.

            “I’m broad but shallow,” Sam said. A joke, Dean realized a beat too late. Sam pulled a pair of sunglasses off the eye shade. “You might want to get some sleep, you’re driving in a few hours.”

            It was surprisingly easy to fall asleep to the rumble of the Impala.

            He woke to some chick wailing _“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine!”_ He shot up in the seat, his lizard brain identifying the smell of leather and thinking DANGER. He’d been drooling on the door and had no idea where he was. It was late afternoon. Sam was still driving, impassive behind sunglasses.

            “What the fuck!”

            “Hungry?” Sam asked, raising his voice above the music.

            Dean turned the music down. “Where are we?”

            “I don’t know. You’re the navigator.”

            “You’re an asshole,” Dean said.

            “You’re not the first person to tell me that.” Sam turned into a diner parking lot. It was more of a storefront, really, with handwritten specials in the window. Burgers and tacos with green chili, huevos rancheros and eggs, bacon homefries served all day.

            “At least you still eat at diners.”

            Sam climbed out of the car and stretched.

            When they were seated Sam said, “Actually I don’t.” Dean had forgotten his comment. “I don’t eat a diners much. Occasionally for breakfast, maybe.”

            “Where do you eat?”

            “I eat a lot of stuff from groceries. They have salad bars and sandwiches. I can stock up for a day or two and take it back to a motel. You still like diners?” Sam asked and Dean thought he caught a note of curiosity, maybe hunger. Like maybe Sam wasn’t quite as detached as he was pretending. Sam tucked the arm of his sunglasses in the neck of his t-shirt.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “Especially for breakfast. But Roni is on me to eat my vegetables.”

            There was a hint of a smile at that.

            “Why don’t you get out of hunting?” Dean asked.

            Sam thanked the guy who gave them menus, a Latino guy with a lined, square face who was obviously owner and cook as well. “There isn’t anything on this menu that isn’t fried,” he observed.

            “You hated it,” Dean said.

            “I didn’t ask you back into my life so I don’t know why you think you deserve answers to questions like that,” Sam said conversationally. He looked back to the menu. “People don’t realize how unhealthy a salad can be. Cheese and salad dressing can be worse than a burger. What are you getting?”

            Dean felt like he couldn’t breath. It was almost like being punched in the stomach.

            “I bet the green chili burger is good here,” Sam said. “Bet his wife makes the green chili.”

            How could he have forgotten rule number one, Winchesters don’t talk.


	5. On the Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out a cigar box. Inside were…badges. Dean caught a glimpse of FBI and CDC before Sam pulled out one in a leatherette folder. Then Sam had the box in the glove compartment, the glove compartment shut and he was out of the passenger side door in almost one motion. Dean scrambled to follow. He had a vague memory of waiting for his Dad in the car while his Dad…no, no, no. He was carrying an unlicensed firearm and Sam was about to impersonate someone.

            They were at a motel in Carson City and it was early in the morning. The night before he had watched Sam casually drink a serious amount of Maker’s Mark while watching television. Dean didn’t mind the occasional whiskey but mostly drank beer. Dean had had about six hours of sleep. Sam had been on his laptop when he woke up and had evidenced no sign of fatigue or hangover.

            In the parking lot, Sam popped the trunk of the Impala, glanced once around and then pulled open the spare tire compartment. “Got your stuff,” he said.

            “Stuff?” Dean said.

            The compartment was organized. More organized than it had been when Dad had been running the show. Dad had always kept it neat, but now it was laid out carefully, systemized. Like medical procedures or something. Things were bagged, bundled, and wrapped.

            Sam reached way up in the back and pulled out a chamois cloth bundle and unwrapped it. Carefully cleaned and stored were the Colt 1911 45 caliber automatic that Dad had given Dean on his twelfth birthday, two of Dean’s hunting knives, a folding knife, and a holy water flask he used to carry. The 45 was in its holster.

            “I’ve got clips,” Sam said.

            Dean was pretty sure Sam used a 9mm so why would he be buying clips for a 45? Of course, the 9mm probably wasn’t Sam’s only pistol. Sam hadn’t struck him as particularly sentimental. Except for this…this careful stash of Dean weapons.

            “You want any of it?” Sam asked. “I can throw it back in the trunk.” All casual like he didn’t care but Dean thought maybe he did care. Felt the tension in him.

            “No, I mean, yeah. Thanks for being a walking sporting goods. You got a kayak in there?” Dean took the 45 and holster. He fumbled adjusting it, he was a long way from fourteen so it didn’t fit without a lot of adjusting and he hadn’t handled anything like this in years. Sam looked as if he wanted to take it from him and do it but was restraining himself.

            The gun felt obvious and heavy. He was wearing it without a concealed carry. He could lose his job for this.

            “Okay,” he said. Sam closed the trunk.

            “Okay,” Sam said.

            They both stood there for a moment, awkward. Then.

“Your turn,” Sam said and tossed him the keys to the Impala. He caught the keys by reflex.

            He had driven the Impala half a dozen times in his life and usually it meant Dad was bleeding or broken (although a couple of times when he was twelve it was driving lessons.) He’d never just _taken a turn_. He’d changed the oil, replaced the spark plugs, even helped Dad with a ring job. When he was sixteen he got a job sweeping and throwing out the trash at a local garage and in a year he was learning his way around cars. He got through college working summers as a mechanic and he thought a lot about the Impala. The car of his dreams.

            Fuck the world.

            Sam just got into the passenger seat.

            Dean was not going to let Sam think that driving the Impala was any kind of big deal. He got in, adjusted the mirrors and the seat. But he couldn’t help sitting for a minute, just feeling the car. Eight cylinders of Detroit steel rumbling old school. He reversed out of the spot and she was so long. As long as his truck. He eased onto the highway and he could feel how powerful she was through the steering wheel.

            Sam was looking at him.

            “What?” Dean said, defensive.

            “It’s just a car,” Sam said, “not sex.”

            “You never understood, Sammy. She’s not ‘just a car’.”

            Sam snorted.

            Dean was pretty sure he was going to drive them the six hours to Jericho and wherever else he could.

            As they got closer to Jericho, Sam said, “You haven’t hunted in a long time. So you can wait this out, okay?”

            “Not gonna happen,” Dan said.

            “I don’t hunt with a partner,” Sam said. “You weren’t really helpful in Colorado.”

            “I was being a fireman in Colorado. Now I’m being a hunter. Tell me about the case.”

            “If I let you in,” Sam said, “and that’s a big if, you have to follow my lead. You were a kid. I’ve been hunting for a decade. That’s as long as a lot of hunters live.”

            “Thanks, Sam. That’s gonna make it easier to sleep at night.”

            “At least this time I brought a paramedic,” Sam said.

            He said it so deadpan that Dean thought he was serious for a moment. Sam wasn’t ten anymore. At ten he couldn’t keep anything from Dean. But he’d been great at lying to teachers and landlords and anyone else and Dean had become anyone else.

            Sam told him what he knew about the case. “John sent us a voicemail.”

            The recording was staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up but it was Dad’s voice and it made Dean feel strange to hear it. “Sam...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Sam. We're all in danger.” Dad sounded so like, Dad. Their whole life had been a carefully contained crisis. Who lives that way? He looked at his brother. That’s who lived that way, grew up in that pressure cooker. Who had all that in his head.

            Another part of Dean was back in that headspace, too, analyzing. “It sounds like there, is there-”

           “EVP,” Sam said and creaked a smile.

           “Did that hurt?” Dean asked.

           “What?” Sam asked.

           “You know, moving your face that way, that smile thing. I know it’s uncomfortable.”

           Sam decided to ignore that. He played the EVP. There was a moment of open air and then the unmistakable, distorted electronic sound of an EVP recording. It was woman’s voice, “I can never go back home.”

           “That’s it?” Dean said.

           “That’s all that’s on the voicemail. I called and he never called back. I called the local hospitals and the county morgue and they’ve got no one matching his description,” Sam said.

           “Well that’s something,” Dean said.

            Sam watched the road, apparently not feeling compelled to comment on whether it was a good or bad thing that John Winchester wasn’t in the hospital or the morgue.

           “Sam,” Dean said wanting to ask what was between him and John Winchester and then remembering the conversation at the diner.

           Sam was alert, something ahead of them. There was a suspension bridge blocked by two police cruisers, and a third parked on the bridge. Out in the middle was a single blue compact, all it’s doors open, abandoned. “Pull over,” Sam said.

           Dean pulled onto the shoulder.

           Sam flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out a cigar box. Inside were…badges. Dean caught a glimpse of FBI and CDC before Sam pulled out one in a leatherette folder. Then Sam had the box in the glove compartment, the glove compartment shut and he was out of the passenger side door in almost one motion. Dean scrambled to follow. He had a vague memory of waiting for his Dad in the car while his Dad…no, no, no. He was carrying an unlicensed firearm and Sam was about to impersonate someone.

           He followed Sam across the bridge, hearing the chuckle of running river.

           They weren’t cops, they were county sheriffs. Dean had no great opinion of cops or county. Firefighters versus cops. Cops were assholes who had issues with authority. One was leaning over a cruiser talking to another deputy sitting half in, half out. “Troy’s dating your daughter, isn’t he?” said the guy standing. “How’s Amy taking it?”

           “Oh, you know,” said the guy sitting. “About like you’d expect.”

           6’ 4” of impassive Sam said, “You’ve had a few of these in the last few years, haven’t you?”

           The standing deputy turned around and looked up and down, took in the long hair, the army jacket, the jeans. “And just who would you be?”

           Sam reached into his jacket and pulled out the leatherette jacket with the ease of someone who was used to this and flicked it open. “Federal Marshall,” he said.

           Dean thought about having a cerebral vascular incident on the spot. Or maybe an aortic dissection. Something major and fast, please.

           “Aren’t you guys kind of young for Federal Marshalls?” the deputy asked.

           Sam looked genuinely pleased, “Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment. So you had another one like this not that long ago.”

           The deputy bought it, Sam was so smooth, so comfortable. “Yeah, about a month ago, a mile up the road.”

           Dean kicked his brain into gear. Pull your weight, he thought. “So you knew the victim,” he said.

           Deputy nodded. “A town like this, everybody knows everyone.”

           “Any connection between the victims besides that they’re all men?” Sam asked. Research on the laptop that morning, of course.

           “Not that we can tell,” the deputy said.

           “So what’s the theory?” Dean asked. Sam paced the bridge, looking into the river where divers were obviously finishing up.

           “Honestly, we don’t know. Serial murder, kidnapping ring?”

           “Well that is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect out of you guys,” he said.

           Sam’s massive hand was like a vise on the back of his neck, hauling him toward the Impala. “He’s off his meds,” Sam said to the startled deputy. “Thank you for your time.”

           “C’mon,” Dean hissed as they walked to the car. “They don’t really know what’s going on.” He turned to face Sam. “We’re all alone on this, I mean if we’re going to find Dad we have to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves.”

            Sam flicked his eyes to indicate someone was standing behind them.

           Another deputy, older and obviously higher up in the food chain, was standing next to two Feds. “Can I help you two boys?” the deputy sheriff asked.

           Sam’s face was a fucking ice sculpture and not of a dolphin or flowers.

           “No sir,” Dean said, “We were just leaving.” To the Feds as they passed, “Agent Mulder, Agent Scully.”

           When they got to the car, Sam said, “Keys.”

           “No,” Dean said.

           Sam looked for a moment like he was going to push it, then he walked to the passenger side door and climbed in. When Dean got in Sam said, “And to think I’ve spent the last decade of my life listening to how much better fucking Dean was at everything.”

           Then he slapped Chris Isaacs into the cd player and they had to listen to him singing about how he didn’t want to fall in love again the rest of the way to town and Dean had to think about what Sam’s comment meant.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why did you have to hit him?” Sam growled. “Why the fuck did you have to hit him?”  
>  The unforgivable thing. Hitting Dad. Dean remembered the punch. He remembered that at fourteen he was already 5’ 9” and he had put everything behind it. He’d broken his father’s nose. His father hadn’t bothered to hit back.

           In town they found a girl outside the cinema hanging flyers, TONY SQUIRE MISSING, and took a gamble it was the girlfriend, Amy. She was all black mesh and studs and goth. Dean claimed they were Troy’s uncles and Sam slid in to say that they were looking for him, too. Sam had changed again, from Federal Marshall to someone who could have been a college kid, no longer threatening at all. He seemed sweet.

           Jesus, the kid was scary.

           One of Amy’s friends intercepted them asking if Amy was all right and tagged along. Dean’s first instinct was to get Amy alone but Sam was all welcoming. After a couple of minutes, Dean saw how smart it was. Amy relaxed with another girl with her. Alone with two guys was creepy. With a friend, not so much.

            Dean herded them to a coffee shop—not a Starbucks style coffee shop but an old sandwich and coffee style place.

            Amy didn’t have anything much to tell. She’d been on the phone with Troy and he’d been driving. He’d said he’d call her right back. Sam was leaning forward, the way he had with Roni, listening to every word as if these girls were the most important thing in his life and not in a creeper way. The girlfriend—also dark eye make-up and crosses and red lipstick—was looking at him like he was a shot of bourbon. The girlfriend could say things that Amy didn’t want to think about. She told them about a local legend. “This one girl,” she said, “she got murdered out on Centennial, like, decades ago. Well, supposedly she’s still out there. She hitchhikes and whoever picks her up, they disappear forever.”

            There was an internet connection at the library but the local paper had no hits for ‘female’, ‘murder’, ‘centennial’. Dean watched Sam pause a moment. Then Sam replaced ‘murder’ with ‘suicide’ and bam.

            “The girl said ‘murder’,” Dean said.

            Sam nodded. “Yeah, but local legend can get twisted, told to a friend by a friend of a friend. It’s like a game of telephone. An angry spirit needs a violent death but it doesn’t have to be murder.”

            Constance Welch, 24 years old, jumped off the Sylvania Bridge and drowned in the river. She’d left her two children in the bathtub for a minute and when she came back they had both drowned. There was a photo of the grieving husband and of the bridge.

            “That bridge look familiar to you?” Dean asked.

#

            They were out in the dark on the bridge.

            This felt so real. Firefighting was a strange dream.

It felt like it should be Dean and Dad. In some ways it felt like it was Dad since he could never tell when he was going to do something that pissed Sam off. Sam had become a lot like Dad. “Do you think Dad is in this town?” he asked.

            Sam shrugged. “Might be.”

            Dean didn’t have any idea how to feel about that. Did he want to see his Dad? _You do what I tell you. I make the decisions about Sam, not you. You’re a child, I’m his father._ Well, he’d been right about that. After he’d thrown Dean out, he’d made all the decisions about Sam all right.

            “I noticed you call him ‘John’,” Dean said.

            “Yeah,” Sam said.

            “I’m sorry,” Dean said.

            “For what?”

            “For…everything I don’t know, I guess.”

            Sam laughed. “That’s a fuck ton.”

            “I want to know about it,” Dean said.

            “I booked you an airline ticket,” Sam said. “Out of San Francisco. So you can get home the day before you have to be at work.”

            “Oh, shit. Dude, how much, I’ll pay you back.”

            “I got the credit card through a bunch of Ukrainian hackers,” Sam said. “I get credit card offers out of random mailboxes and send them to them. Ukraine and Korea are real hotbeds for hacking.”

            Because hunting paid nothing.

            “I still want to pay you,” Dean said.

            “You can’t just parachute in,” Sam said. “I can’t…”

            “Just get out of the life, Sammy,” Dean said.

            “YOU LEFT! YOU LEFT ME WITH ALONE WITH HIM.” Sam yelled. Even in the dim light from the streetlights Dean can see the raw emotion, maybe the first real emotion he’d seen from Sam.

            “I didn’t want to!” Dean said. “You know that!”

            “Why did you have to hit him?” Sam growled. “Why the fuck did you have to hit him?”

            The unforgivable thing. Hitting Dad. Dean remembered the punch. He remembered that at fourteen he was already 5’ 9” and he had put everything behind it. He’d broken his father’s nose. His father hadn’t bothered to hit back.

            He shook his head. _Because we had been there for three months, Sammy. You had a friend, some kid you hung with after school. You seemed relatively happy. The guidance counselor said it would make a big difference if you had some stability and I believed her. I just wanted you to finish the fucking school year._ “I don’t know,” he said. “I was just fourteen. I was mad.”

            Sam shook his head. “I…I’m sorry. I’m glad you got out. I just can’t have you drop in again and then go away, okay?”

            “Okay,” Dean said. “Okay, we can talk about this later, right?”

            “Yeah,” Sam said. Dean could feel the door slam shut. Fuck.

            They stood there while the wings of the angel of violent emotion stirred the air and rustled their hair or so it seemed to Dean. He wondered if the whole trip had been a mistake and decided that no, he had woken up too many nights convinced that Sammy was dead and now at least he knew that he wasn’t. Damaged and strange, yes, but not dead, not yet. He’d get a contact number, keep tabs on the kid, lure him out of the life. Sam was already no longer under Dad’s thumb.

            “Dean,” Sam said, and Dean looked up to see a woman standing on the railing of the bridge. The ghost of Constance Welch was beautiful, dressed almost like a bride in rags of white, her bare feet tender and vulnerable. She looked at them for a long moment and then leaned until her contact with the railing was more a courtesy than necessity and stepped off.

            They ran to the railing to look over into the dark water below which was pointless, of course. Constance Welch had committed suicide years ago.

            At the end of the bridge the Impala rumbled to life, all bass notes. The headlights came on and lit them up. Dean squinted trying to see who was driving but the lights were too bright. He couldn’t make out anything but the silhouette of the car. He could imagine the vibration when she revved.  

            “Where are the keys?” Sam asked.

            Dean pulled them out his pocket. They reflected the headlights.

            They were well and truly screwed.

            The car’s tires squealed and she came at them. They ran. Dean considered the fact that cars were faster than people and when Sam cut right and went over the side of the bridge, he followed. As he vaulted he noted that Sam had hung onto the railing and was hanging by his hands which was, of course, the smart thing to have done. He had time to note Sam’s expression as he plummeted.

            He hit the water and came up.

            “DEAN!” Sam yelled, real fear in his voice. “DEAN!”

            “Yeah,” he said, and crawled onto the bank.

            “Are you all right?” Sam called.

            Dean thought of several answers but settled on, “I’m super.”

            Sam’s laughter was relieved, real.


	7. John Winchester's Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The room was dark and it took a bit for Dean’s eyes to adjust and then he was a kid again and he was scared because last time he’d seen his Dad, his Dad was pissed at him. It looked like his Dad had just stepped out. The place felt like his Dad. It wasn’t the room (which was a hotel room, this one with wood paneling and a plaid bedspread.) It was the research, tacked up to the walls. Pictures. A map. Newspaper articles. Like the inside of John Winchester’s brain was there for him to see.

 

 

           Sam picked a hotel. Dean followed him into reception even though Dean knew he smelled like sewage. The old guy at the desk didn’t even raise an eyebrow until he looked at the credit card Sam handed him then he said, “You guys having a reunion or something?”

            “What do you mean?” Sam said.

            “That other guy, Bert Aframian, he came in and bought out the whole room for a month.”

            Sam nodded and said, “Something like that.”

            Dean looked down and saw that Sam’s card said ‘Victor Aframian.’

            Sam smiled and picked up his card and said thanks.

            He headed straight for Room 10, ‘Bert’s’ room, and said, “Keep an eye out.” He was carrying a lock pick set and unlike Dean, he was obviously in practice. Well, Sammy always was good at the clever stuff, Dean thought. He turned his back and looked at the parking lot. What was it, a five pin lock? Click click click click click. Sam was in in less than a minute.

            The room was dark and it took a bit for Dean’s eyes to adjust and then he was a kid again and he was scared because last time he’d seen his Dad, his Dad was pissed at him. It looked like his Dad had just stepped out. The place felt like his Dad. It wasn’t the room (which was a hotel room, this one with wood paneling and a plaid bedspread.) It was the research, tacked up to the walls. Pictures. A map. Newspaper articles. Like the inside of John Winchester’s brain was there for him to see. Salt around the bed.

            “Salt and cat’s eye shells,” Sam said. “He was worried, trying to keep something from coming in.”

            Dean stepped across the salt line. There was half a hamburger next to the bed still sitting in a fast food wrapper. He picked it up and took a whiff and winced. “I don’t think he’s been here in a couple of days.”

            On one wall were pictures of victims. “I don’t get it,” Dean said. “I mean, different men, different jobs, age, ethnicities. There’s always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?”

            From behind him, studying another wall, Sam said, “John figured it out. He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She’s a woman in white.”

            It took Dean a moment and then he remembered. He looked back at all the victims. “You sly dogs,” he said.

            “John would have dug her up, salted an burned her,” Sam said. “But she’s still out there.”

            “So he didn’t,” Dean said. “Why not?” Because she got him? Don’t think that. John Winchester wouldn’t get trapped by a ghost. He had bigger fish to fry.

            “I don’t know,” Sam said, “but I’d go talk to her husband, if he’s still alive. I’ll see if I can track down an address. You…get a shower. You smell like shit. I mean, actually.”

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “Thanks for that.”

            Sam started for the Impala to get his laptop. “Hey Dean,” he said.

            Dean turned around and saw something he didn’t expect to see. He saw on the face of this twenty-two year old guy, an expression he knew from his ten-year-old little brother. “What I said,” Sam said, “on the bridge, about you leaving? I’m sorry. I’m really glad you have a good life. Roni seems like a great girl.”

            “It’s okay, Sam. I meant it when I said I was sorry for not being there.”

            Sam nodded. Took a step back, all but fled to the Impala. Dean turned around and saw a photo stuck to the mirror, old Kodachrome, shiny and faded with age. It was of John and him and Sam. Sam was so young his hair was blond. He remembered the picture, not surprising since they had so few. They’d gone fishing—well something like fishing. Really, Sammy was only five and too young to stay still to fish. Dad was perched on the hood of the Impala with Sammy on his lap, and Dean was next to Dad trying to look cool, squinting into the sun.

            It had been a good day.

            Dean took the photo.

            When he came out of the shower Sam was talking to someone on his cell. “Yeah, I’m going to be there in a day or two…If you’re not busy…No, I just want to check some stuff out.” Sam listened for a minute and his face went soft, smiling. “I don’t know if I can, but I should be able the day after. Got a lot to tell you. See ya, Jess.”

            A girl? It sounded like his brother was talking to a girl.

            Dean checked his own phone. Roni had left him a message. “You were right, I did okay on my midterm in adolescent psych. All right, better than okay. A-. Practicum next semester. I miss you. Can’t wait to hear about Sammy.”

            Sam said, “You, um, want me to pick you up something to eat?” Sam didn’t appear to think about eating much. Dean had the sense that Sam ate to live rather than living to eat but clearly the kid needed to get out and get some space. He was used to being alone.

            “Yeah,” Dean said, “sounds good. Anything. Long as it’s fried. You know, I’m kinda on vacation here.”

            “Still like pie?” Sam asked.

            A little warm spot bloomed in Dean. “What the hell kind of question is that? Only commies don’t like pie.”

            Sam grinned and ducked his head, weirdly shy. He scooted back out the door again.

            Maybe things were turning around. Maybe his brother was somewhere in that big body. He would call Roni, tell her, then after eating they’d go talk to Constance Welch’s husband.

            His phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number. “Dean Winchester,” he said.

            “Cops, Dean, take off,” Sam said casually in his ear.

            “What about you,” Dean said, thinking, ‘Sam has my number?’ and ‘Now I have Sam’s number,’ and ‘Fuck,’ all at the same time.

            “Kind of too late, but don’t worry, I can handle it,” Sam said. “Go find John.” And hung up.

            Dean couldn’t help it. He checked out the window which was not what he was supposed to do. It was the deputy from the bridge and there was another deputy walking towards the hotel room.

            Dean went out the window in the bathroom. Sam could handle himself. As Dean was learning, Sam could clearly handle himself better than Dean could.

#

            The husband had a junkyard which looked like got very little use from the grass growing in it, more like a place where cars came to die than salvage. Joseph Welch looked old before his time. He was unshaven and lined and he had a kind of musty smell. Dean wondered how Sam would talk to Welch. What would he be? Official? Open and trustworthy? As it turned out Welch himself told Dean what role to play when Dean showed him the photo of Dad with him and Sammy and asked if he’d seen Dad. Welch had seen him and thought he was a reporter.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “We’re reporters. Working on a story about the disappearances.” Sam would really be better at pulling off reporter.

            “Hell of a story you’re working on,” Welch said. “The kind of questions he asked me?”

            “About your late wife, Constance,” Dean said. He kept his face as open and trustworthy as possible. He _was_ used to being trusted. People hated cops but they liked firefighters. Firefighters were the good guys.

            “He asked me where she was buried,” Joseph Welch said.

            “Right,” Dean said, “and just where is that, again?” Welch frowned at him. “Just fact checking, you know. Probably won’t end up in the story or anything.”

            “In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge.”

            “Right,” Dean said. “And you moved because...”

            “I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died.”

            Dean nodded. He saw tragedy a lot and was starting to get used to it. Kids were the hardest, though. He looked around. “Did you ever think of starting over, getting married again?” he asked. This didn’t look like the life of a man who was really living, not with that shack of a trailer and this yard.

            Welch shook his head. “No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known.”

            The woman on the bridge was beautiful. Dean wondered if Welch had been fighting above his weight class and knew it. Probably didn’t know it, men never did. Women in white were women who had been betrayed in love.

            “Love of your life,” Dean said. Lying asshole. “You were good to her, right?”

            Welch looked at him for a moment but couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah.”

            “Thanks for your time,” Dean said. He walked toward the Impala. He knew he should just get in the car. Should just drive away. Just close his mouth for once. Cause he was so good at that.

            “You ever hear of a woman in white?” he said. He knew how well his voice carried. He was used to talking over a lot of noise. Fires and accidents could be noisy places.

            Welch turned around, eyebrows knit in confusion.

            “A weeping woman? It’s just a ghost story, Mr. Welch. That’s all.”

            “A ghost story?” Welch said.

            “Yeah. A ghost story, told all over the world. Kind of universal. Funny about that. There’s lots of different versions, I guess but they all got a few things in common,” Dean explained.

            “I already talked to that other reporter and you,” Welch said, “I don’t really have time—”

            “When they were alive, their husbands cheated on them. So in a moment of total insanity, see, they kill their children,” Dean says. He can see his words strike like silver bullets. “Then they realize what they’ve done and it just makes them snap and they kill themselves. Their spirits are cursed to wander lonely roads and when they find an unfaithful man, they kill him and that man is never seen again.”

            “You…you think that has something to do with Constance?” Welch said.

            “You said you were good to her,” Dean said.

            “Even if…” Welch said, “I mean, I made mistakes but Constance, she was a good mother, she would never…you get the hell away from here. And you don’t come back.”

            It was fine with Dean. He had found out what he needed to know. Now Sam needed to get out of the hands of the county.


	8. You Can't Go Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean was driving the Impala through the dark and the trees. Sam had the journal. It was like they were carving up parts of their father’s life. Or maybe Sam was but he was not because he had a life where he saved people and it was not by digging up corpses. (But he was loving this. Loving this. This was like fighting fires twenty-four/seven without all the mundane stuff of paperwork and certifications and paying rent. This was like the greatest hits of life without the boring parts.)

            “A 911 call claiming shot’s fired, four people down,” Sam said over the phone. “That emptied the place.”

            The highway was black and bordered by trees. Breckenridge was winding through the middle of nowhere. Dean wished they could have gotten this done before it got dark.

            “Yeah, well, it would be a pretty big deal anywhere,” Dean said. “I’m headed to Breckenridge where the body is buried. Let’s salt and burn.”

            “I’ll meet you there but we’ve got to talk—” Sam’s voice was less personal on the phone.

            “I know, the husband was a cheating son of a bitch. We are dealing with a woman in white. Why didn’t Dad just do the salt and burn?”

            “That’s what we need to talk about,” Sam said.

            “You think something happened to him?”

            “I think he’s gone,” Sam said. “I’ve got his journal. He left Jericho.”

            “Without his journal?” Dean remembered the journal, a leather thing with ties. The journal was high on the list of sacred things. More sacred than guns. Don’t touch the journal without permission. He remembered what it was like to be able to read something in the journal. Like being handed the Bible or something. The journal was his Dad. “He doesn’t just leave his journal.”

            “He did. It was at the station. There’s a message in it.”

            Dean felt dread. Like it was some sort of suicide note or something. “What message.”

            Sam sighed. “Coordinates. What else?”

            Dean was driving the Impala through the dark and the trees. Sam had the journal. It was like they were carving up parts of their father’s life. Or maybe Sam was but he was not because he had a life where he saved people and it was not by digging up corpses. (But he was loving this. Loving this. This was like fighting fires twenty-four/seven without all the mundane stuff of paperwork and certifications and paying rent. This was like the greatest hits of life without the boring parts.)

            (Wait until you’re digging up a corpse, he reminded himself. Nothing like five or six hours with a shovel to take the bloom off that fucking rose.)

            “Dad would never skip out in the middle of a hunt,” Dean said.

            And there she was, barefoot on the cold pavement in the middle of the road. She gleamed in the headlights in her white rags. Her face was so beautiful. Dean hit the brakes without thinking and the Impala’s wheels bit and left skid marks as it went right through her.

            From the floor where he had dropped his phone he could faintly hear Sam saying, “Dean? DEAN?”

            Dean stared into the rearview mirror. Constance was sitting in the wide back seat of the Impala. “Take me home,” she said.

            “No fucking way, lady,” Dean said. “You’re totally not my type.”

            The doorlocks snapped down. The accelerator pressed down and the Impala accelerated. Dean stamped on the brake, hard. In the side mirror he saw the smoke from the rear brakes as they heated up.

            “Take me home,” Constance said from beside him.

            “I haven’t cheated on Roni!” Dean said.

            “That’s not who you left,” Constance said.

            Dean tried to steer but the Impala’s steering wheel was rigid in his hands, turning on its own. He tried to pry up the lock on the driver’s side door.   He was just a passenger on this freakin ride. “I don’t do The Haunted Mansion,” he muttered. Salt. He needed salt. Which was in the trunk because they didn’t need salt in the car.

            Since he didn’t need to drive he scrabbled for his phone.

            “Sam!” he said.

            “Dean,” he heard Sam say.

            “I’ve got a passenger.”

            “Stay cool, big brother. I’m on my way.”

#

            She took him to a dark ruin of a house. It had been a nice two story but in the damp of Northern California it was already rotting. The Impala pulled up in front and the engine and headlights shut off. The engine ticked in the sudden silence, cooling. He fought the impulse to apologize to the car.

            “Where the hell are you, bitch,” Dean said.

            “I can never go home,” Constance said. She flickered, passenger seat, back seat, passenger seat. Then she climbed into his lap. “I’m so cold,” she said.

            Jesus. She pushed him back against the seat so hard it reclined. She was cold and not even remotely enticing as far as Dean was concerned and really, he was usually pretty good about at least appreciating pretty but dead revenge spirit apparently didn’t do it for him.

            “I’m not unfaithful!” Dean said. He wasn’t. Not that it wasn’t hard sometimes. But Roni was a good thing. Maybe when they first started dating, after Roni had assumed they were exclusive, there had been a few times, but they hadn’t actually talked about being exclusive so that had been a kind of no man’s land…

            “You will be,” Constance said and kissed him. Bile rose in his throat and he struggled. He reached for the keys to the Impala. She pulled back and disappeared. Dean whipped his head around, looking for her. Then he felt something searing on his chest and yelled. Five fingertips had seared through his t-shirt. Then she was there again, sitting on his lap and her eyes were just inches from his. They were wide and dark and beautiful and he was fucking terrified. _She reached into his chest_ and the pain shut everything down. He couldn’t breath. He was going to die. Bitch. He had just found his brother.

            A gunshot shattered the window and she startled. It was Sam, gun in both hands, half crouched, stalking towards the car. She glared at him and he shot again, a bullet through her and just inches from Dean. She disappeared.

            “Take her home, Dean,” he said.

            She reappeared on Dean’s lap.

            Sam shot again. She disappeared. The bullets couldn’t hurt her but apparently she didn’t like being shot at anymore than Dean like bullets inches from his nose.

            “What the fuck!” Dean said.

            “DRIVE INTO THE HOUSE!” Sam said.

            He reached for the keys and she reappeared in the back seat. Sam turned slightly and coolly shot out the rear passenger window. Dean flinched and started the car.

            “You’re going home, bitch,” he said. He slammed the car into drive and floored it. The Impala’s back wheels spun, gripped and threw him forward. The car climbed the porch, smashed into the front wall and stopped halfway through the big front room.

            Dean felt like he’d committed some sort of sacrilege.

            Sam was at the passenger side door. “Dean! Are you okay!”

            “I think…” Dean said.

            “Can you move?” Sam asked.

            “Yeah, get me out.”

            Sam pulled open the door and hauled Dean across the seat.

            The house had some ruined furniture in it as well as trash and some graffiti on the walls. It was probably a local legend; ‘the house where those kids’ died probably made it a magnet for teenagers. Constance was there. She glared at them and Sam raised the gun to fire again but a bureau skated across the floor and slammed into them, pinning them against the Impala.

            Dean felt like he’d been hit by a car. Through the pain he managed to think, oh great, the salt was in the trunk of the Impala. Sam’s face was also a mask of pain but his hands were already gripping the bureau, pushing, although the bureau didn’t seem to be moving. The dude just didn’t quit. That’s probably what happened when you survived a decade hunting monsters that annoying, rational part of Dean’s mind thought. The same one that was also assessing their chances here and not seeing much in the way of options.

            “Mommy,” said a high, piping voice.

            The headlight on the Impala flickered. (Only one, he’d busted a headlight on the Impala.) It wasn’t Constance, she was already here. Oh great, more ghosts. Sam looked at something, the staircase. In the little bit of light Dean could see water running down the staircase and at the landing were two children, a girl and a boy. They were wearing their Sunday best, the girl in a dress and the boy in white shirt and dress pants, but they were both drenched, soaking wet, water dripping off them.

            “Mommy,” said the boy, “You came home.” He was holding the little girl’s hand.

            This was creepy.

            “Oh, babies,” Constance said, her voice stripped of malevolence, hopeless.

            Then the children are behind her. The cling to her and she wails, a terrified, empty wail. For a long, endless moment the wail rang through Dean and he could only think of when he slipped away from the first foster placement and hitchhiked back to Virginia where Dad and ten year old Sam had been staying and the guy who opened the door to the hotel room was some stranger, of all of the nights in the juvenile shelter, rows of single beds and sheets with the name of the county stamped on them and kids making noises all night, waiting to see where he would end up knowing that Sammy was out there and he’d failed, he’d failed, he’d failed.

            Then Constance and the children just melted.

            Sam pushed the bureau back and Dean almost fell. He planted his palms on the flat wood to hold himself up.

            “Are you okay?” Sam asked.

            Dean nodded, not sure he could speak quite yet. When he could draw a breath without losing it he asked, “How did you know that would work.”

            Sam was already standing at the spot where Constance and the children had disappeared, studying the wet carpet. “I didn’t,” he said as if it was no big deal. “I just knew she didn’t want to be here.”

            “Fuck you,” Dean said.


	9. I Waited for You to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You came back to Virginia?” Sam said very quietly.  
>  “Yeah, some guy was in your hotel room.” The door opened and some guy with gray and white stubble looked out, heat and cigarette smoke rolling from the dark room. ‘You want to come in?’ the guy had asked and Dean didn’t know to this day if the guy was just offering a phone call or a chance to get out of the cold or something else.  
>  The Impala rumbled and the asphalt hummed. Dean liked driving at night. It was soothing.  
>  “I kept waiting for you to come,” Sam said, looking out the window.  
>  Something in Dean died a little. He tried to say something but couldn’t, cleared his throat but his voice still wouldn’t come.

            Dean drove the few hours into Palo Alto. It was hard to believe that he had a full day tomorrow before Sam would take him to San Francisco and put him on a plane.

            “What will you do about the car?” he asked.

            “I’ll take it to Bobby Singer,” Sam said.

            “Right.” Dean had memories of the salvage yard, of playing among the cars. Of a Ford Torino used as a fort. Bobby Singer talking the rough incomprehensible magic of cars and parts to men who stood with their hands in their pockets looking out at the yard and appraising what they saw. “You know I called him.”

            Sam looked over. “Bobby?”

            Dean nodded. “Yeah. After I got picked up by CPS they put me in a foster home. I stole a hundred bucks and hitchhiked to Virginia but you and Dad were already gone so I found his number through information and I called him.”

            Streetlights would shine in the front of the car and then disappear as they passed over head, eclipsed by the roof. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean could watch Sam’s face in light, then in shadow, then in light again.

            “What did he say?” Sam asked after a long while.

            “He said that the last time he’d seen Dad it hadn’t gone so well. Which I remembered. That’s when Bobby chased him off with a shotgun.” Dean took a breath. “So they weren’t talking and he didn’t know where Dad was. He had a phone number but Dad didn’t answer. I didn’t know anyone else to ask. I didn’t have a phone then.” Dad didn’t think fourteen year olds should have cell phones in 1992.

            “You came back to Virginia?” Sam said very quietly.

            “Yeah, some guy was in your hotel room.” The door opened and some guy with gray and white stubble looked out, heat and cigarette smoke rolling from the dark room. ‘You want to come in?’ the guy had asked and Dean didn’t know to this day if the guy was just offering a phone call or a chance to get out of the cold or something else.

            The Impala rumbled and the asphalt hummed. Dean liked driving at night. It was soothing.

            “I kept waiting for you to come,” Sam said, looking out the window.

            Something in Dean died a little. He tried to say something but couldn’t, cleared his throat but his voice still wouldn’t come.

            “It’s not your fault,” Sam said to the passenger window.  

#

            They found a little motel. In the morning they had breakfast and Sam said he had to run some errands then he was going to pick Dean up and introduce him to a friend of his. “Um, Sam,” Dean said. “You know, tomorrow you can stay with your friend. I can stay here.”

            Sam shrugged. “I can stay here. I’ll stay with her after I drop you off at the airport.”

            Dean wanted to make a smart remark about girlfriends or booty call but there was something fragile between them he didn’t want to mess with so he just shut up and watched TV.

            Sam came back in a funk, barely spoke. He seemed bigger, broader, less Sam-like and more like someone who would show up on an episode of _Cops_. More like when Dean had first seen in in Greeley. Dean hoped that this Jess person could get him more human. They checked out and drove into Palo Alto proper.

            Dean didn’t expect them to end up in the University area. Jess turned out to be a cute blond with curls in a pretty blue-flowered sundress and when she ran to Sam he thawed instantly. More than thawed, Sam became somebody Dean thought he might have really known instantly was his brother; a guy who smiled, and looked like he had emotions.

            “Jess,” he said, “this is my brother, Dean.”

            She turned, eyes big. “Dean the fireman, Dean?”

            Sam had told someone he had a brother?

            Sam grinned. “Like, how many brothers named Dean do I have?”

            “Oh my God I never thought I’d meet you!” Jess said.

            Dean said, “I’m glad to, ah, meet you, too.” To Sam, “Two things. First, baby brother, you are way out of your league. And second, you told her about me?”

            Jess laughed and she had an infectious laugh. “Oh yeah, Sam’s mysterious past. But he checks your girlfriend’s Facebook page all the time. And yours, too, but you never update yours.”

            Lightning bolt of understanding. Roni had set up a Facebook page for him and he’d checked it, like, two times. But he knew it said something about Roni being his girlfriend and they were ‘friends’ or something.

            Sam was smiling. Smirking. “She posts a lot about you,” Sam said. “The calendar thing? She had a link where you could buy it. Also, your diet and workout to get ready for it.”

            Dean groaned. (Sam checked Roni’s Facebook page? Had for years? It was a warmth better than whisky in his chest.)

            But Sam was upset and he seemed unable to hide it from Jess. In front of Jess he was the way he used to be around Dean, all Sammy and feelings. The thing he was upset about was another surprise. “I went to see that prof,” he said, “to see if he would send me the syllabus for that class on Foreign Economic Policy?”

            Jess nodded to show she was listening.

            “They figured out someone is having people tape seminars.”

            Jess covered her mouth with her hand. “What did he say?”

            “I can’t do it anymore, Jess, I just can’t,” Sam said.

            “It’s…it’s not illegal,” Jess said.

            “You’re in college?” Dean said.

            Sam shook his head.

            “He got a full ride scholarship to Stanford,” Jess said, “but he wouldn’t take it. Because of your stupid family business. Whatever it is.”

            “Jess—” Sam said.

            “So he finds people who are taking the classes he would have been taking and has them record them,” Jess explained, “and he reads the books on his own and takes the tests on his own if he can get a copy and writes the papers.”

            Dean remembered the text books in the motel room in Greeley.

            “Don’t start,” Sam said to him.

            “What the hell!” Dean said. “You could have gotten out!”

            “I have my reasons,” Sam said and the face Dean got was not the Sam that Jess got. It was the cold bastard he’d found in the motel room in Greeley. Not that honestly Dean gave a flying fuck.

            “For Dad? Are you doing this for Dad?” Dean laughed. “Oh come on, like Dad ever did what you needed! Get a life, Sam!”

            “No, I’m not doing it for him,” Sam said.

            Dean looked at Jess. “Excuse me, do you mind if I talk to my brother alone for a minute?”

            Jess looked at Sam. He looked at her, nervous, but nodded. “We’ll be back,” he said.

            Outside it was clear and sunny, just a bit nippy in Palo Alto. “Are you going to tell me you like this?”

            Sam shrugged.

            “If you want to go to college, why not just go to college?”

            “I’m getting the benefits of college without paying for it,” Sam said.

            “Oh right, except for, you know, the degree. The thing that gets you, you know, a job that doesn’t get you killed. A full ride? To a really great school? Stanford is a really great school, right?”

            Sam gave him a look that positively dripped with disdain. “Yeah. It’s a great school.” He took a breath. “Okay, I was all set to go. I was going to tell John at the last minute because I knew he would probably disown me the way he did you. We were hunting ghouls and I got hurt pretty bad. Marble mausoleum lid fell on me and then apparently some blood loss I don’t remember. Hospital bad. Bad enough I would have had to defer a semester.”

            “So defer a semester,” Dean said.

            “After I got out of the hospital, John dropped me at Bobby’s to recover and one night when he was visiting on his way through to some weird lead on a demon thing, while I’m supposed to be doped out of my mind on pain meds I hear him talking to Bobby and he tells Bobby that he’s not sure I’m human.”

            Sam was looking at Dean. Like this meant something.

            Dean couldn’t help it, he grabbed Sam and shoved him up against a car. The car’s alarm went off but he ignored it. “You didn’t go to college because that ignorant son of bitch said something that stupid?”

            Sam didn’t fight back. “Doesn’t it explain a lot?”

            Dean almost hit him. “You asshole. I have to tell you, I fed you and took care of you until you were ten years old and your shit sure smelled human to me!”

            There was more yelling and a lot more arguing. Dean never got why that meant that Sam couldn’t go to college except it had something to do with Sam not being a person who would have a normal life.

            Dean was so enraged he finally said, “Fuck it. Get me a cab, I’m going back to the motel. You should stay with Jess tonight, I can’t hear any more of this.”

            They walked back in silence.

            At the front of the apartment Sam said, “I’ll get a cab.”

            “Maybe dinner later,” Dean said.

            Sam didn’t bother to answer.

            Dean knew he was going to regret this. Knew he shouldn’t have allowed himself to get so angry. Fuck John Winchester for the number he’d done on Sam. Fuck Sam for being so fucked up. Fuck him for thinking he could do anything about it.

            Three days with Sam and he was already back in the crazy. The whole family dysfunctional crazy. It was a crazy violent life and it brought out the violent crazy in the people who lived it. He thought about the bridge and the house and the Woman in White. His Dad dragging them across country. He was still wearing a fucking unlicensed handgun.

            I waited for you to come back, Sam had said.

            Okay. Suck it up, he thought. You’ve got a temper. Get over it. He turned around and that’s when he smelled smoke.

            It was November 2, the day his mother had died.

            He ran into the house to get his brother.

#

            He called the job and told them there had been a death in the family and he wouldn’t be in.

            He called Roni. “Baby,” he said.

            “Dean, oh my God, what’s wrong?” she said.

            “There was a fire,” he said. “Sam’s girlfriend was killed.”

            “Are you,” Roni said. “Is he…”

            “We’re not injured. But,” he was sitting on one bed in a hotel room and on the other bed his brother sat, methodically stripping and cleaning guns. At least his hands were. Otherwise, there was no one inside there, just an empty space. “I can’t leave him right now.”

            “Of course,” Roni said.

            “I can’t leave him again,” he said.

            “When are you coming home?” Roni said.

            He watched his brother reassemble a gun. “I’ll call you soon,” Dean said. And ended the call.

            Sam. He was going to stay, just until Sam was okay again.

            When are you coming home?

            What did that even mean anymore?


End file.
